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It has been said time and time again, that Pakistan’s textbook syllabus needs a complete overhaul, with new and fresh ideas that may benefit the students instead of the old reto and cramming tactics.
Ever since social media has gripped its feet in Pakistan, people have been sharing pictures of textbooks with unbelievable content created for children by different publishers. From the Baloch being labeled as ‘looters and plunderers’ to different Islamic perspectives that might create sectarian conflict, these books literally shape the minds of young children.
In a recent revelation, one book for Montessori children has taken center stage. The English language book created for Montessori Complex High School shows something that is making children and their parents say WTF!
Inside the book on a page that shows different facial expressions of humans, the last expression will make you say the same thing as well. Among emotions such as fear, rage, sarcastic, flirty, disgust and other things, there is also present an expression that literally says ‘WTF!’ — showing absolute confusion and perplexity.
Children of the school have been studying things brought into their curriculum from western books, which is an easy way out for publishers, who are very used to copy-pasting content from different sources on the internet or present in the market.
The back-cover of the book even shows an Islamic verse’s translation, which says, “Aye Allah! Mere ilm mein izaafa kerna!” – as easy as it is to print the verse, it is extremely difficult to do justice to it.
The Montessori Complex High School which is present in Karachi’s Gulshan-e-Iqbal area, needs to be confronted on the issue by competitive and concerned authorities of Sindh’s education department, as this book is a blatant contradiction of all the values a school should be teaching its students.
